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BRITISH COLUMBIA

Angry UFAWU lobby presses MPs

Twenty five angry representative
Of the United Fishermen and Allied
Workers Union are in Ottawa this
Week to make a ‘‘final appeal”’ to
Members of Parliament for
Changes in federal department of
fisheries policies before the 1981
fishing season is underway.

Union president Jack Nichol
Said the lobby was organized to
dramatize the crisis in the West
Coast fishing industry with sharply
teduced stocks of salmon, herring
and halibut due to mismanagement
by the federal government.

“‘We are here as well to protest
an overwhelming wave of an-
houncements, pronouncements,
Tegulations and policy changes
from the West Coast Department
of Fisheries unprecidented in our
history,” the union said in a 30
Page submission to MPs.

_ “Their ivory tower proclama-
tions not only ignore the health of
the industry, but also cynically
disregard the wishes and interests
of the vast majority of the people
who participate in B.C.’s
fisheriis.”’

News received Monday that
Tegional officials in the department
of fisheries are recommending
Telaxation of regulations on the
Sports fishery in the Gulf of
Georgia only further aggravated
the temper of the UFAWU lobby.

While union gillnetters have
been hit with a total closure of the
Fraser River for fishing chinook or
Spring salmon after May 27, the
department is now recommending
that a limit of one spring per
fishermen per day in the sports

fishery be relaxed to four per day.

Scientific management of the
fishery has been reduced to cheap
vote chasing, Nichol told an airport
press conference as the group
departed. The union had sup-
ported regulations on the sports
fishery, but they were opposed by
the recreation and tourist industry
and by the B.C. Wildlife Associa-
tion.

Nichol also rapped fisheries of-
ficials who less than 24 hours earlier
appeared before a meeting of 300
fishermen in New Westminster to
defend the closures on the Fraser
River in the name of conservation,
but said nothing of the recom-
mended concessions to the sports
fishery.

The fisheries department has an-
nounced a total closure of the
Fraser River past the Patullo
Bridge for spring salmon after May
27 and a reduction in the open
fishing days before May 27 to nine.
The closures will cost the several
hundred gillnet fishermen who
have traditionally fished the river
more than half their 1981 income,
but will do little to conserve declin-
ing spring salmon stocks because
90 percent of springs are caught
before they reach the river.

Most of the springs denied to the
Fraser River gillnetters will go to
the sports fishery and to U.S.
fishermen who last year were
granted 50-70 fishing days at Point
Roberts, only a few miles from the
mouth of the river.

Sunday in New Westminster
Fraser River fishermen packed the

Carpenters’ Hall to send off the «

FISHERMAN PHOTO—GEOFF MEGGS

i

fishermen’s demands.

lobby and show support for its de-
mand that the river be opened at
least one day per week for the 1981
season, as in previous years. The
union’s stand has also been endors-
ed by municipal councils in Delta,
Maple Ridge, Langley and New
Westminster, and by the New
Westminster Labor Council.

The closure of the Fraser is only
one of several related issues the
union will focus on in three days of
lobbying MPs and in a special ses-
sion with the standing committee
on fisheries Friday.

Among the major themes the
lobby will stress is its strong op-
position to the proposed Canada-
U.S. salmon interception treaty.

UFAWU TRUSTEE HOMER STEVENS AT MEETING . .

Still to be ratified by Parliament,
the treaty would freeze an im-
balance of about five million
salmon — one quarter of the entire
West Coast salmon run — in the
U.S.’s favor.

Another major new measure
from the department of fisheries is
a new licensing scheme for trollers
which the union says is the beginn-
ing of an area licensing scheme and
part of a ‘‘passion”’ on the part of
fisheries officials to eliminate the
small combination troller-gillnetter
from the industry.

The new licensing measures are
makeshift measures which hurt
fishermen, but don’t address the
basic problem of overcapitaliza-

. demanding that federal government listen to

tion caused by the licensing of
boats, rather than fishermen, the
union argues. It is demanding a
-‘firm and irrevocable’’ freeze on
licenses and conversion to licensing
fishermen so that the right to fish
can’t be bought and sold.

Other demands that the lobby
will press are for full financing of
the salmon enhancement program
without a new ‘‘landing tax’ on
fishermen; stronger habitat protec-
tion for the fishery with stiffer
penalties for abuses of the resource
and stricter enforcement of existing
legislation; revoking of the permit
to Amax Mines to dump tailings in-
to Alice Arm pending a full public
inquiry.

(s

By SEAN GRIFFIN

With the announcement Mar.
26 that the U.S. Building Trades
would move to set up a new na-
tional labor federation — to
counter the decision of the Cana-
dian Labor Congress in suspen-
ding the Building Trades unions
— the establishment of a second,
breakaway labor centre in
Canada moved ominously froma
possibility to imminent reality.

James McCambly, executive
secretary of the Building Trades
Department, an arm of the AFL-
CIO, stated Mar. 26 following a
Meeting of the trades in Ottawa
that the department’s executive
board would move to set up a
“national labor body’? — in
direct challenge to the CLC.

The move is the latest response
to the CLC executive council’s
suspension of the Building Trades

CLC president Dennis McDer-
Mott announced last month the
building trades locals would be
able to affiliate directly to a new
CLC Building Trades Depart-
ment but, if they failed to do so by
Apr. 3, they would be suspended.

The CLC decision, which was
unanimously endorsed by the ex-
ecutive council, prompted the
reaction from McCambly that the
CLC was “‘trying to take over
direct control of the Building
Trades,”’ that McDermott was on
“a self-serving quest for power’’
— and that the Building Trades
had, therefore, ‘‘no alternative
but to act.”

Behind the rhetoric is amove to
Open.a new division in the Cana-
dian trade union movement

under the guise of defending the
integrity of the Building Trades.

for non payment of per capita.

For trade unionists in this pro-
vince, the dangers of a new labor |
body being established at this
time are grimly apparent — par-
ticularly considering the
economic climate and the renew-
ed threat of wage controls.

One of the unions which is par-
ticularly concerned about the in-
evitable disunity that would result
and which is continuing to press
its international president to pay
up the outstanding per capita to
the CLC is the United
Brotherhood of Carpenters and
Joiners which represents some
14,000 members in this province.

building trades and the CLC
stemmed originally from three
issues — the affiliation of an in-
dependent Electrical Workers
local in Quebec, the jurisdictional
dispute with industrial unions,
and building trades demands for
structural changes in CLC con-
ventions — but recently has
focussed on the demand for
structural changes, with the
building trades seeking represen-
tation at conventions based on
total membership rather than
numbers of locals. In addition,
the trades want the right vested in
the national union, rather than

You have to ask: What does the division of
the labor movement mean at a time of
rampant inflation and the renewed threat of

wage controls.

Lorne Robson, secretary-
treasurer of the Provincial Coun-
cil of Carpenters told the Tribune
in an interview last week that as
far as he could read it, ‘“The over-

whelming opinion of Carpenters

‘locals across the country is to stay
in the CLC.”’

Despite that, he added, the
establishment of a new trade
union centre by the Building
Trades Departments ‘‘is damn
near a certainty.

“The internationals seem to be
determined to go ahead, on the
basis that McDermott won’t
negotiate with them on the
changes that they want in the
CLC structure.”

The dispute between the

the local membership, to name
convention delegates.

That demand, which would ef-
fectively prohibit rank-and-file
participation by locals and would
mean that most delegates would
be appointed, has already been
rejected by CLC convention vote.

But just as the international’s
decision to withhold per capita
from the CLC was made without
reference to the Canadian
membership, the decision to
move towards the establishment
of asecond trade union centre has
followed a similar pattern.

Robson emphasized that the
pressure to set up a new national
labor body —thename Canadian
Federation of Labor has already

Carpenters press international to

been floated — ‘‘is coming from
Washington.

‘There sure isn’t any rank and
file demand in Canada for it,’’ he
added.

The sequence of meetings has
underscored that point. Robson
noted that every time the Cana-
dian executive board of the
Building Trades met with the
CLC or took some action relating
to the dispute ‘‘it was preceded by
a meeting in Washington of the
general presidents of the Building
Trades.

“Tt looks like they’re calling the
shots.”

Ironically, the so-called Cana-
dian Federation of Labor con-
templated by the Building Trades
could well be launched on the
basis of an already existing struc-
ture for the Canadian Building
Trades. That structure was initial-
ly formed in response to the grow-
ing demand for Canadian
autonomy but has since been
distorted by the U.S. leadership
into a form which is, for all in-
tents and purposes, run from
Washington.

At the last Canadian conven-
tion of the Building Trades last
July in Calgary, for example, 134
of the 168 delegates were directly
appointed by the international
leadership.

“It’s pretty clear that the CFL
— or whatever the new body
might be called — is going to have
the same undemocratic base,”’ he
said.

But there is more than the issue
of democracy at stake, he warn-

ed

“You have to ask: what does
the division of the labor move-
ment mean at a time like this —

pay up

with inflation running the way it
is, when wage controls are again
being considered and plants are
being shut down?”’

He emphasized that the new
labor body ‘“‘has the earmarks of
an attempt to make the Canadian
labor movement subservient to
the U.S.”’ and an attempt ‘‘to
take away the militancy of the
labor movement and hamstring
the ability of the CLC to fight
back.””

He cited policies such as public
ownership of energy and Cana-
dian trade union autonomy —
both stated policies of the CLC —
as ‘‘key policies which you can
predict this new labor body won’t
adopt.”

“And it won’t endorse the
NDP — it will support the
Liberals and Tories.

‘‘There’s not question about it:
the crucial issue at this point is the
unity of the trade union move-
ment — and that’s why we’re urg-
ing our international to stay in all
labor bodies and pay up the per

.capitas,’’ he said.

The Provincial Council of
Carpenters is currently cam-
paigning to press the interna-
tional to pay the outstanding per
capita dues and stay in the CLC
and also to implement the
minimum standards for Cana-
dian autonomy adopted by the
CLC convention in 1974.

Every Carpenters local, coun-
cil and executive in the province
has been urged to send telegrams
to. international president
William Konyha demanding that
the union pay the per capita and
remain in the CLC. y

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 10, 1981— Page 3